Gerry, Check your email! Frank, Thanks. I was happy with the dandelions. Love that super macro :) I'll get out in the winter. I'll not enjoy it, probably, but I am determined to try. Or, I could go to the Caribbean and get pictures of ice in my drink, lol. Hmmmm. I thought about what you and Kevin said about next weekend being warmer (Saturday sunny and 79, Sunday 77!) and decided to wait for Hawk Mountain. I was walking through Gerrity's in a turtleneck yesterday, so I think it was a wise decision. I'm going to see if I can rope someone into going with me. I don't have many friends that are interested in that sort of thing, so I might have to tell them it's Gertrude Hawk Mountain....lol. One might but the thought of a trip of that duration with her kind of makes my head hurt. Eh, we'll see. How was the circus. Awesome I bet! The commercials were fun. Jeanne

You've got a lovely Cooper's Hawk here, Jane. Nice find. The tail pattern, coloring, shape, and length give it away. The lighting on my screen is making it difficult to see well enough to age this bird, but I think I see darkish underwing coverts which makes it look like an adult from here. I see what you're saying about Broad-winged, and good eyes for that, but BWHAs won't show this long of a tail. The adults are the ones with heavily marked chests and adults have a black tail with a thick white bisecting band. The underwing pattern on a BWHA would show a dark rim around lightly-colored underwings. The Broad-winged Hawks have been migrating south and Hawk Mountain, PA has reported over a thousand sightings of migrating BWHAs flying over in the last two days. Wow! Keep watching those skies!

We have had a pair of Cooper's Hawks nesting in our neighborhood for the past two years. I like watching the hawks, and don't want to harm them in any way, but they have completely driven off (or eaten!) all our songbirds. Two weeks ago, we had scores of sparrows, chickadees, and juncos, as well as 3 pairs of cardinals at our feeder. There were so many birds that they were waiting on the railing adjacent to the feeder for their turn -- and we have a large feeder -- 12 cup capacity with at least a dozen feeding ports. We were refilling the feeder every day or every other day. Five days ago, the songbirds just disappeared overnight -- went from frequent refilling of feeder to no activity at all for last four days. This morning, we saw the Coopers Hawks for the first time this season, although they may have been in the area for a time. I can't believe they could have devoured all the songbirds, but they've surely intimidated them to the point where the seed level in our feeder has remained unchanged for four days. I was surprised when the hawks first showed up, as I really didn't think they'd nest in town. (We live in residential neighborhood of medium-sized lots in a relatively small town.) Our neighborhood has the usual amount of "commotion" that goes on in a neighborhood with young families, working couples, and retirees -- vehicle noise of frequent comings and goings, usual noise made by kids and pets (mostly dogs), and seasonal power equipment (mowers, snowblowers). While we don't live in an unusually noisy area, it's by no means quiet either, and the noise level doesn't seem to deter the hawks one bit. Last summer, I noticed that I didn't see or hear the hawks for a few days when a flight of crows stopped in our area for a day or two. We also have at least one owl (not sure what kind, but I suspect great horned owl by its calls), which we were hearing nightly for most of the winter, although I haven't heard the nightly hoots for a few days. Although I have no great love for crows, I'd like to see a few more around, as they seem to keep the hawks at bay. What else can we do to encourage the hawks to "move along" and leave our songbirds alone? As I said, I have no desire to harm the hawks in any way; I'd just like to see them relocate.

The cold front did move through Maryland as predicted and I thought it would be a good time to go back to Washington Monument State Park. A lot of other hawkwatchers had the same idea as I did, but there weren't very many raptors. I went yesterday (Sunday, October 3). The problem was there just wasn't any wind. I did see some sharp-shinned hawks, Coopers hawks and 2 redtails. Both weekends I have seen lots of migrating blue jays. Last weekend I must have seen 500 blue jays, yesterday probably 100. I also spotted two red headed woodpeckers yesterday. Richard